Debi King
Kids Trapped In Cabin With Human Feces Overnight
Monarch Of The Seas - December 18, 2006
Debi King
Date: December 18, 2006
Cruise Bruise: Sanitation Violation
Age: 16
Hometown: California
Bruise Location: Off San Diego
Cruise Line: RCCL
Ship: Majesty Of The Seas
Details:
On December 18th, my husband and I took our family on our first ever cruise. What was intended as a fun family Christmas trip turned out to be a very frightening experience. Below is a description of the events that happened.
On Day 1 after leaving port in Los Angeles my daughters allowed one of my sons to use their restroom because the toilet in the boys state room would not flush. The toilet overflowed in the girls' bathroom with human feces flowing out on to their bathroom floor. They both called for maintenance for their rooms. The girls asked to have their toilet fixed and to have the floor cleaned of the waste that had overflowed on to the floor, and the boys to have their toilet fixed so that it would flush.
When I arrived to my room (situated between both of my children's rooms we were in 2585, 2587 and 2589) they explained what had happened with the toilets and during that time we were able to get both of their toilets to flush. But the mess was still on the floor in the girls' bathroom.
We got dressed and went out for a bit that evening but returned fairly early to our rooms. The girls went to their room about 10pm that night, even though nobody had arrived to clean up their bathroom. At that time they locked their deadbolt and went to bed.
On Day 2 I called the girls at 7:45am to wake the girls as they both planned to go to Pilates with me in the exercise room. Neither of the girls showed up for Pilates as they weren't able to open their stateroom door. I just assumed that they had gone back to sleep.
At 9:30am neither of the girls showed up for breakfast and I started to wonder what was going on. After breakfast I went to my friend's room on the 8th floor (Carolyn Kirner in 8030) and found that the girls had called her room because they couldn't open their bedroom door, and had been trying to get out since 8am.
We sent one of Carolyn's son's to the room to see if he could help them open their door. About 30 minutes later we called down to the room again and the girls said that maintenance was trying to get them out. At this point I was getting quite concerned so I went down to their room to find 4 or 5 maintenance men hammering at their lock.
They continued to try and get the lock off the door with hammers and chisels for around 2 hours. At one point I decided to take a picture and the security man (Owen) told me to delete my picture. I refused and I became extremely panicked at that time, realizing that there was something desperately wrong. I kept insisting that they needed to do whatever it took to get them out of the room IMMEDIATELY. Their response was that if it were an emergency they would. But yet they continued to go about their business the same way (with hammer and screw drivers, and chisels).
When they were finally able to open a small hole in the door I looked in to see my daughters panicked on their beds. NOBODY from the ship had talked to them at all during this time. I told them to stay on their beds and tried to assure them that they would be out soon. It still took quite some time to get the deadbolt unstuck.
Once my girls were finally out, I complained to the customer relations that they had been trapped in their room all night with feces on their floor. And had there been an emergency of any type they may not have been able to get to safety since it obviously took hours for them to be freed from their room. I was extremely upset and the girls were quite distraught as well.
I sent them to go get something to eat while I waited to find out what they were going to do now with a door with no lock and all my daughters' luggage and personal items left vulnerable in their room. I waited for over an hour before they said that they would send a housekeeper to stand guard at their room. Nigel (our housekeeper) showed up and I explained to him what had happened, he seemed to be unaware of the entire situation.
A man showed up to clean the bathroom at this time and removed soiled towels that the girls had used to mop up their floor. By about 2:00pm we finally were able to put on swimsuits and go to the pool. It was too late to do anything in port that day, and frankly we were still so upset over all of this that I didn't feel comfortable to leave the ship.
That night, my girls said that they did NOT want to sleep in their room again. I told them that I would see about getting them a new room. The only room available was another inside cabin further away from mine, and they definitely did NOT want to do that. We offered to let them sleep in our cabin with us, but they decided to go back in to their cabin, but refused to lock their door for the rest of the trip.
My husband and I met with Rosa, the guest relations supervisor, and she agreed that this was a terrible situation and understands our emotions toward it. She said she would do what she could to try and compensate for our anguish. She sent a plate of sweets to the girls' room as well as ours and our son's rooms. And a bottle of wine to ours. But otherwise there was no further compensation. She explained that there wasn't any more she could do and that we would need to follow up with Royal Caribbean when we left the boat.
